Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • I-Dentity: The Biracial Woman as a Bridge In Third-Wave Feminism

    I-Dentity: The Biracial Woman as a Bridge In Third-Wave Feminism

    Erica Jackson
    Fall 1993

    This is by no means intended to be an exhaustive discussion of the biracial experience in America, which is in no way monolithic.  In fact, it is inspired by the belief that race (whether singular or plural)  is an outdated concept and so it alone does not determine self-image, and if it does, not necessarily in the ways we stereotype each other, nor to the degree of signifigence generally attached to it in the mass media. 

    Toward that end, this paper will suspend disbelief in the concept of race, in order to explore the dimensions and constructions of race.  If nothing else, I hope it raises questions about the assumptions we  carry with us.  A biracial person is first and foremost a person, with all the shared and unique qualities of any other.

    Assumptions about the biracial become self-fulfilling prophecies. Like all assumptions (regarding women, or blacks, for example), they limit the possibilities of both the person making them and the person about whom they are made, and in their ability to connect.  While mixed race people are a natural link between the races of which they are a part, images of them have  instead been used for divisive purposes.

    This is especially disturbing as it applies to relationships among and between white, biracial and black women.  Rather than connecting on the basis of interests or other shared experience, the relationship between blacks and biracials is often predicated upon the latter’s partial denial of heritage.  This illustrates a basic problem in race relations.  By viewing race as a fundamental identification, it becomes defined in very narrow terms and experiences, alienating blacks both from non-blacks with whom they might share profound experiences and from other black/part black biracial individuals whose experience is very different from their own.
     
    Theories aside, the author questions the ability of one so tied to the issue as herself to be objective.  Are my assertions and reflections simply based on the idealism with which I judge events?  Could I be reinventing my experience to accommodate my beliefs?  Am I nit-picking or merely whining about realities I should simply accept?  Perhaps objectivity is overrated and empiricism does not always apply.  After all, if we don’t tell our own stories, who will tell them for us?  So far, no one…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The New Color Complex: Appearances and Biracial Identity

    The New Color Complex: Appearances and Biracial Identity

    Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research
    2001
    Volume 3, Number 1
    Pags 29-52

    David L. Brunsma, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Missouri, Columbia

    Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Illinois at Chicago

    Ethnic identity research has largely focused on the identity choices of White ethnics (Alba, 1990; Ignatiev, 1995; Waters, 1990). One key factor in these choices is bodily appearance. We extend this research to Black and White Biracial individuals and examine the role that physical appearance plays in their “choices” of racial identity.  We test Rockquemore’s (1999) taxonomy of Biracial identity using survey data from a sample of 177 Biracial respondents. The results indicate that Biracial individuals do make choices within circumscribed cultural contexts and these understandings are influenced not by skin color, but by an actor’s assumption of how others perceive his or her appearance.

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

    The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

    SAGE Publications
    1995
    512 pages
    Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

    Edited by Maria P. P. Root

    In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

    Table of Contents

    The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

    PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

    • A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
    • Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
    • The Real World – Susan R. Graham
    • Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
    • Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
    • Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

    PART TWO: IDENTITY

    • Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
    • Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
    • On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
    • An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

    PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

    • LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
    • Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
    • Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
    • Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
    • Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

    PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

    • In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
    • (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
    • Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
    • Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

    PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

    • Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
    • Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
    • Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
    • Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

    PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

    • 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall

  • Author Dr. Bonnie M. Davis Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Author Dr. Bonnie M. Davis Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed.  Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival)
    Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
    Episode: #135 – Bonnie M. Davis, Ph.D.
    When: Wednesday, 2010-01-06, 22:00Z

    Bonnie M. Davis, Ph.D., Author and Educator
    Educating For Change®

    Bonnie M. Davis is a veteran teacher of 37 years who is passionate about education. She has taught in middle schools, high schools, universities, homeless shelters, and a men’s prison. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including Teacher of the Year, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Anti-Defamation League’s World of Difference Community Service Award. Davis has presented at numerous national conferences and provides services to schools through her consulting firm, A4Achievement. Her publications include The Biracial and Multiracial Student Experience: A Journey to Racial Literacy (2009), How to Coach Teachers Who Don’t Look Like You (2007), How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You (2006), African-American Academic Achievement: Building a Classroom of Excellence (2001) and numerous articles on literacy instruction. Dr. Davis will be the keynote and featured speaker at the National Association of African-American Studies (NAAAS) 2010 Teacher Summer Conference, June 27-30, 2010 in Orlando, Florida.  She received her BS in education, her MA in English, her MAI in communi­cations, and her PhD in English.

  • Danzas Nacionalistas: The representation of history through folkloric dance in Venezuela

    Danzas Nacionalistas: The representation of history through folkloric dance in Venezuela

    Critique of Anthropology
    (2002)
    Vol. 22, No. 3
    pages 257-282
    DOI: 10.1177/0308275X02022003758

    Iveris Luz Martínez
    Johns Hopkins University

    In this article I argue that the nation is not only invented or imagined, but depends on activities and practices in order to be invented and imagined. Here, the focus is on dance in Venezuela, where a number of groups use what they call `folkloric dance’ to construct and depict the national `culture’. This article considers the case of Danzas Típicas Maracaibo (DTM), a dance company founded in 1976 under the auspices of the government of the state of Zulia in Venezuela. DTM presented a carefully crafted and selective stylized repertoire of `folk’ dances from throughout the country. These re-created dances are called danzas nacionalistas, although the dances are often interchangeably referred to as `folkloric’. They are used to make statements about ethnic and cultural authenticity, and in their own way contribute to the discourse of mestizaje. In Venezuela, as in much of Latin America, there is entwined in nationalist rhetoric the idea of `race’ and cultural mixing, or mestizaje. Here, mestizaje does not only or necessarily imply a `racial’ mixing or a mixing of `blood’, but it also refers to `culture’. History, and discourses of the past generally, are especially implicated in these activities and representations.

  • Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican demography approximates the present-day ancestry of Mestizos throughout the territory of Mexico

    Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican demography approximates the present-day ancestry of Mestizos throughout the territory of Mexico

    American Journal of Physical Anthropology
    Volume 139 Issue 3
    Pages 284 – 294
    Published Online: 2009-01-12

    Rodrigo Rubi-Castellanos
    Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

    Gabriela Martínez-Cortés
    Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

    José Francisco Muñoz-Valle
    Instituto de Investigación en Reumatología y del Sistema Músculo-Esquelético, Centro Universitario de Ciencias de la Salud (CUCS-UdeG), Guadalajara, Jalisco, México

    Antonio González-Martín
    Departamento de Zoología y Antropología Física, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), 28040 Madrid, Spain

    Ricardo M. Cerda-Flores
    Departamento de Genética de Poblaciones y Bioinformática, Centro de Investigación Biomédica del Noreste (CIBN-IMSS), Monterrey, Nuevo León, México

    Manuel Anaya-Palafox
    Laboratorio de Genética Forense, Instituto Jalisciense de Ciencias Forenses (IJCF), Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, México

    Héctor Rangel-Villalobos
    Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

    Rodrigo Rubi-Castellanos and Héctor Rangel-Villalobos contributed equally to this work.

    Over the last 500 years, admixture among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans, principally, has come to shape the present-day gene pool of Mexicans, particularly Mestizos, who represent about 93% of the total Mexican population. In this work, we analyze the genetic data of 13 combined DNA index system-short tandem repeats (CODIS-STRs) in 1,984 unrelated Mestizos representing 10 population samples from different regions of Mexico, namely North, West, Central, and Southeast. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) test demonstrated low but significant differentiation among Mestizos from different regions (FST = 0.34%; P = 0.0000). Although the spatial analysis of molecular variance (SAMOVA) predicted clustering Mestizo populations into four well-delimited groups, the main differentiation was observed between Northwest when compared with Central and Southeast regions. In addition, we included analysis of individuals of Amerindian (Purepechas), European (Huelva, Spain), and African (Fang) origin. Thus, STRUCTURE analysis was performed identifying three well-differentiated ancestral populations (k = 3). STRUCTURE results and admixture estimations by means of LEADMIX software in Mestizo populations demonstrated genetic heterogeneity or asymmetric admixture throughout Mexico, displaying an increasing North-to-South gradient of Amerindian ancestry, and vice versa regarding the European component. Interestingly, this distribution of Amerindian ancestry roughly reflects pre-Hispanic Native-population density, particularly toward the Mesoamerican area. The forensic, epidemiological, and evolutionary implications of these findings are discussed herein.

  • “If Races Don’t Exist, Then Why Am I White?”: The Race Concept Within Contemporary Forensic Anthropology

    “If Races Don’t Exist, Then Why Am I White?”: The Race Concept Within Contemporary Forensic Anthropology

    Focus Anthropology: A Publication of Undergraduate Research
    Issue VIII: 2009
    Kenyon University
    20 pages

    M. Todd Gross
    Western Michigan University

    It is fundamental for human beings to ask why and how things happen. Looking across the globe it is clear that this human tendency to explore our world manifests itself in a multitude of ways and in response to a variety of experiences. Among those who partake in the exploration of our world, some think the most honest way to answer the questions of “why” and “how” are through science. Broadly speaking, science is stated as analysis based upon observations made of an objective, observable reality. Since it involves the exploration of an objective reality, the accuracy of the labels and terms used to describe that reality are of utmost importance. In this paper, various issues will be examined in the biological and social sciences to show that the use of the race concept for Homo sapiens by forensic anthropologists is inaccurate and is both biologically and socially irresponsible. Available to forensic anthropologists are more responsible alternatives for assessing human skeletal remains, such as matching various morphological characteristics to those individuals found on missing person reports.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction 1
    Race as Biology? 1
    Race as Culture 3
    Race in Forensic Anthropology 6
    Misperceptions of Race in Forensic Anthropology 10
    Alternatives to “Racial” Assessment of Human Skeletal Remains 13
    Keeping Things in Perspective 15
    Conclusion 15
    Bibliography 16

    Read the entire article here.

  • La Mulata: Cuba’s National Symbol

    La Mulata: Cuba’s National Symbol

    Focus Anthropology: A Publication of Undergraduate Research
    Issue IV: 2004-2005
    20 pages

    Tamara Kneese
    Kenyon College

    This essay provides a discourse analysis of la mulata as an ambivalent symbol of Cuban national identity. In many ways, la mulata is representative of Cuba’s sexual, racial, and economic hierarchies. On the one hand, la mulata is a living emblem of Cuba’s histories with imperialism and slavery, mirroring Cuba’s exploitation by white male foreigners. On the other hand, la mulata is portrayed as a manifestation of Cuba’s tenacity and diversity, particularly during the Special Period when jineteras, who were often characterized as mulatas, drew tourists and capital to Cuba.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction
    Sugar, Sex, and Marriage
    U.S. Tourism, Part I
    U.S. Tourism Part II –The Special Period
    Images of the Mulata in Brazil and in Cuban-American Consciousness
    Conclusions
    Appendix
    References
    Abstract

    Read the entire article here.

  • Puerto Rican Phenotype: Understanding Its Historical Underpinnings and Psychological Associations

    Puerto Rican Phenotype: Understanding Its Historical Underpinnings and Psychological Associations

    Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences
    (2008)
    Vol. 30, No. 2
    pages 161-180
    DOI: 10.1177/0739986307313116

    Irene López, Assistant Professor of Psychology
    Kenyon College

    The following is a historically informed review of Puerto Rican phenotype. Geared toward educating psychologists, this review discusses how various psychological issues associated with phenotype may have arisen as a result of historical legacies and policies associated with race and racial mixing. It discusses how these policies used various markers to demarcate an “authentic” Puerto Rican identity, and how we continue to reference these variables when defining Puerto Rican identity, despite the fact that identity is contextual and fluid. In reviewing the historical underpinnings and contextual nature of phenotype, it is hoped that the reader will gain a greater appreciation of the role of phenotype in the lives of Puerto Ricans and understand how phenotype, and, most importantly, historical trauma can be related to a host of psychological concerns.

  • Multiculturalism in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru

    Multiculturalism in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru

    Race & Class
    (2008)
    Vol. 49, No. 4
    pages 1-21
    DOI: 10.1177/0306396808089284

    Felipe Arocena (farocena@fcs.edu.uy), Professor of Sociology
    Universidad de la República-Uruguay

    The different strategies of resistance deployed by discriminated ethnic groups in Brazil, Peru and Bolivia are analysed here. In Brazil, Afro movements and indigenous populations are increasingly fighting against discrimination and developing their cultural identities, while demystifying the idea of Brazil’s national identity as a racial democracy. In Peru and Bolivia, indigenous populations are challenging the generally accepted idea of integration through miscegenation (racial mixing). Assimilation through race-mixing has been the apparent solution in most Latin American countries since the building of the nation states. Its positive side is that a peaceful interethnic relationship has been constructed but its negative side, stressed in recent multicultural strategies, is that different ethnicities and cultures have been accepted only as parts of this intermingling and rarely recognised as the targets of discrimination.